The Last of the Stanfields(32)

It contained nothing more than a single sheet of lined paper bearing a short and cryptic message:

October 22, 7 p.m. Sailor’s Hideaway, Baltimore.

It was the nineteenth. That left less than three days.

I began rushing about, throwing my toiletry bag and other essentials pell-mell into a carry-on bag before realizing I hadn’t even bought a ticket yet. I ran to my computer, hunted down a last-minute ticket, and hit “Buy Now.” Insufficient funds. Shit. With my heart racing in my chest, I called Maggie up in the hope she could lend me the cash.

“About that . . .” I could hear her wincing. “It turns out there’s some truth to the story I told Dad about problems with overdraft at the bank.” Being an absolute expert on all my sister’s shortcomings, I knew for a fact she wasn’t a cheapskate, so I took her at her word.

“How about you tell me why you need two thousand pounds so desperately?” she asked. “Are you in deep shit or something?”

I told Maggie about the strange new letter. She immediately flew off the handle and started ranting and raving about what a mistake it was. What the hell was I thinking, putting myself at the mercy of a lunatic, just to get kidnapped and murdered and have my ravaged corpse thrown into the sea? Why else would the poison-pen set up a nighttime encounter at a place called Sailor’s Hideaway?

Maggie has a wild imagination that concocts outlandish things, most of which tend to be macabre. My counterargument far from convinced her: If a maniac were really trying to lure in his prey, wouldn’t he lay the traps a bit closer to home? It seemed like a whole lot of trouble making his victim cross the ocean, with perfectly decent murder victims just next door. A logical point.

“Aha!” Maggie exclaimed. “Not so fast. You disappear so far from home, there’s a better chance no one would ever realize.”

“It’s not like the poison-pen asked to meet in the middle of the woods somewhere,” I pointed out. “It’s Baltimore!”

Maggie went silent and gave up. She knew me well enough to know that I had made up my mind and would stop at nothing to see this through.

“What about asking your magazine for an advance on travel expenses? Isn’t traveling part of your job, or am I a blubbering imbecile?”

I was the blubbering imbecile, to use her beautifully poetic words. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I hung up on my sister midsentence and called my editor in chief. By the time he picked up, I had already contrived an angle for the article. The magazine was long overdue for a feature on Baltimore. After all, the city had some intense urban renewal underway, not to mention one of the largest commercial ports on the East Coast. We could also do a sidebar on Johns Hopkins University (the article was writing itself—thanks, Wikipedia!). Why not highlight the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, a center for African American history?

When I paused, my editor grunted out his indifference, not quite sold on the pitch. “Baltimore isn’t exactly sexy stuff, you know.”

“Oh, I beg to differ. It’s sexy, all right. And undiscovered.”

Another grunt, but with a little more interest this time. “Let’s say you’re right. Why Baltimore, out of the blue?”

“Because no one knows about it, and I’m out to remedy that!”

Right in the nick of time, I made a serendipitous discovery at the bottom of the screen, the perfect weapon for a masterful coup de grace. My boss had a well-documented Edgar Allan Poe obsession, and since the illustrious poet had been kind enough to make Baltimore his final resting place, I pitched using Poe to tie the feature together, complete with a perfectly pompous title: Baltimore and the Last Days of Edgar Allan Poe.

Before I even got to “Poe,” my boss had burst out laughing. I couldn’t blame him.

“Easy, tiger,” he said, composing himself. “How about you just stick with the economic resurgence angle, how far the city has come and all that, how it’s growing into an appealing destination for students. Engage with locals, take the city’s pulse. The elections are just a few weeks away, and I’m not convinced Trump is going to get the epic ass-whooping all the polls are predicting. So, fine. I’ll sign off on a one-week assignment. Accounting will send your funds through tomorrow. And take a nice snapshot of Edgar Allan Poe’s tombstone for me, will you? You never know.”

Under normal circumstances, I would have literally jumped for joy at having convinced my editor to green-light a story I came up with all on my own. But not tonight. While my job was entirely built on leaping into the unknown, I had a sinking feeling that this trip would uncover things of a whole different nature. And for once, my courage was faltering.

In any event, I couldn’t leave England without saying goodbye to my family. Seeing Maggie was pointless; she would just berate me again and do everything within her power to change my mind. I had a feeling Dad wouldn’t take the news very well either, considering I had promised to stay in London longer this time around. But I was most concerned about telling Michel. Even though it was already late, I called him and asked if I could drop by.

“You . . . want to come here? Why?”

My silence told Michel everything he needed to know. He sighed. “When are you leaving?” he asked.

“Tomorrow, an early-afternoon flight.”

“Will you be gone for a long time?”

“No. I’ll be back soon, I promise. A week, ten days at the most.”